Shopping carts are conventionally constructed to be wheeled around stores such as supermarkets, drugstores, hardware stores, or the like, as the customer accumulates and stores the goods he desires to purchase in the basket for the shopping cart. At the time the shopper has completed storing all the goods he desires to purchase in the shopping cart, the shopper proceeds to the store checkout counter to have the goods priced and billed. The conventional shopping carts are generally pushed to one side of the checkout counter to allow the goods to be unloaded therefrom for pricing by the checkout clerk. These conventional types of shopping carts have been provided with a baby seat compartment, adjacent the rear of the cart, so that a young child may be safely seated in the compartment while the shopper pushes the cart around the business establishment and selects the goods he wishes to acquire. The baby seat compartment is generally constructed and defined so that the young child faces the shopper pushing the cart. Such conventional baby seat compartments are usually collapsible in some manner to permit the volume of the cart basket to be increased for storing additional merchandise therein when there is no need to use the baby seat compartment.
A more recent type of shopping cart that has been developed is known in the art as an over-the-counter cart and is in extensive use at the present time. The over-the-counter type of shopping cart has been designed to permit the merchanise-laden basket of the cart to be moved over the top of a checkout counter. For this purpose, the basket for the cart is supported on one side of the cart by an elevated frame for supporting the basket just above the top of the checkout counter as the cart is moved through the checkout counter. The baskets for such over-the-counter shopping carts are generally provided with a front gate that is movable to an open position to overlie the checkout counter to permit the checkout clerk to slide the goods stored in the basket from the bottom of the basket to the countertop, one-by-one, as the clerk prices each piece of merchandise on a cash register. These over-the-counter type of shopping carts are also designed with baby seat compartments that are collapsible to increase the storage capacity thereof. Typical prior art over-the-counter type of shopping carts is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,751,059; 3,815,932; and 4,067,591. These over-the-counter carts are generally designed to permit the baskets to be lifted and moved rearwardly over the baby seat compartment for nesting with similarly constructed carts. Such nestable carts, for example, are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,423,882.
Checkout counters have been improved in recent years by the addition of electronic scanners built into the top of the checkout counters for scanning the coded price data recorded on each piece of merchandise. When an over-the-counter type of shopping cart is utilized with a checkout counter equipped with an electronic scanner, the positioning of the open front gate on the counter has been found to interfere with the operation of the scanners and other checkout operations. Accordingly, over-the-counter carts have been developed that permit the front gate of the basket to be slipped underneath the cart basket and stored thereunder while the cart overlies the checkout counter during the checkout operation, thereby not interferring with the checkout operations and the scanner and yet allowing each piece of merchandise to be slipped from the basket onto the counter top to be accounted for by the checkout clerk. An over-the-counter type of cart having such a storable gate is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,118,044. Experience with this type of cart has proven the ease with which individuals may remove the front gate of the cart when it is open, when they desire to use such gates for barbecues, or the like. In addition, experience has proven that the latching mechanisms for the front gates for some of these over-the-counter type of carts are imperfect to the extent that when the basket is loaded with merchandise, some of these prior art mechanisms become unlatched due to the pressure exerted by the merchandise against the front gate. The prior art elevated frames for these carts are generally constructed with separate U-shaped frame elements and handles. Accordingly, at the present time, improvements in the over-the-counter type of carts, to avoid, in particular, the aforementioned problems of the prior art carts, is desired.